


even just to reach is a triumph

by sickoflosiingsoulmates



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: (for now) - Freeform, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, hi i love sofia lee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29337087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sickoflosiingsoulmates/pseuds/sickoflosiingsoulmates
Summary: And then, she keeps losing him, over and over, each time he comes to visit her, Questing Blade in hand, and it doesn’t stop hurting.[or, a collection of all the times sofia has lost dale]
Relationships: Dale Lee/Sofia Lee
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	even just to reach is a triumph

**Author's Note:**

> whew! i wrote this all in one sitting which i pretty much never do & i love it, hope you enjoy! endless thanks to sav (@ grassland girl here & tumblr) for beta’ing for me
> 
> title from hot knife by fiona apple

The first time Sofia loses Dale is heartbreaking.

It starts as a normal day. Dale wakes her up on his way to work with a featherlight kiss on her forehead and Sofia hums contentedly, voice warm with sleep. She gets up a few minutes later (okay, maybe more than a few - with the sun on her face and the memory of Dale’s lips on her skin, she doesn’t want to get up, sue her) and sees Dale doing the daily crossword at the kitchen table, a mug of coffee sitting beside him. “I can’t believe you still use the newspaper for that,” Sofia remarks, her first words of the day.

“It’s not the same on my phone,” he responds, a familiar exchange, one that they have had often in the softness of morning. Sofia pours herself a cup of coffee with the rest of the pot, grabbing Dale’s hand across the table as she sits, thumbing through Facebook on her phone.

It’s such a normal morning, is the thing. She’s parsed through it a thousand times since then, looking for a clue that Dale would leave here mere hours later. That’s what’s most distressing - he acted normal, acted like he was still in love with her when he knew he would leave her.

He doesn’t even give her the dignity of telling her in person, sending her a measly text that he found another girl, Isabella Infierno (Sofia doesn’t like to judge other women, but _Jesus Christ_ could she sound any trashier. Besides, she thinks she’s allowed a pass for the woman she was cheated on with), and he’s leaving her. She’s on her way home from the salon when she gets the text, and it's a gut punch, knocking the wind out of her. Immediately, she knows she can’t go home.

So, she goes to the nearest bar, one she doesn’t frequent but knows well enough anyway, and drinks until she can’t remember how many she’s had. She doesn’t cry; of the few things she remembers of that night, that’s one of them. The crying comes later. That night, she’s filled with a searing rage, a rage that bubbles and churns below her skin. A rage that is only fueled by the alcohol she consumes.

She doesn’t do anything at the bar, but when she goes home, she takes her shoes off and throws them across the room, one at a time. One of them bounces just so on the wall, the stiletto heel denting the drywall. In that moment, she can’t bring herself to care; if anything, the mark keeps her grounded, tells her that what she’s feeling is real.

The next morning, Sofia wakes up with the worst hangover she’s had in years. She doesn’t really even register it, using the headache as an excuse to call into work. The day is spent in a numb, fuguelike state, sitting on her living room couch while reality shows drone on the television in front of her. She can’t tell if this is better or worse than the rage, feeling nothing. She tries not to think about it.

The weeks following Dale leaving are rough, to say the least. Sofia goes to work, cries into at least one client’s hair, goes to a bar, drinks until she can’t think straight, and goes home to pass out on her couch. Sometimes, she doesn’t even make it home, waking up in alleys and on sidewalks.

Sofia Lee would’ve been ashamed of her, but Sofia Bicicleta doesn’t care. Moreover, Sofia Bicicleta doesn’t _want_ to care, because caring about herself won’t bring back Dale. So, she drinks and she cries and she hates him and, despite everything, still loves him, and she just tries to make it through each day even though it kills her.

\--

The second time Sofia loses Dale is soul shattering.

This is for two reasons: one, the fact that she didn’t know he _died._ She feels so many things, heartbreak and regret and grief and a dozen other things that she can’t name, but mostly she feels like an idiot. Sure, hindsight’s twenty-twenty, but she spent countless sleepless nights looking for signs, and she could never find anything. _Of course Dale would never cheat,_ she thinks, mind simultaneously racing and startlingly clear.

Two: she has to leave him almost immediately.

When the angels come down to retrieve him, she’s inconsolable. She yells something about the deer, but the attempt is futile. Tears blur her final vision of Dale as he’s pulled back into Heaven, and this is somehow so, so much worse than the first time.

(If she had to guess, it’s because this is so much more final. Even when she was burning with rage, when she was crying nonstop, when she was _hating_ him, she still held onto a hope in the back of her mind that he would come back. Now, she knows there’s no chance of that; people don’t come back from the dead.)

She curses Isabella Infierno with all she has. Alejandro has a gentle hand on her back as they go to meet up with the rest of the Dream Team, but it’s not bringing her much comfort, not when her husband is _fucking dead._

Sofia can’t believe she spent so much time hating him when he had never done anything to be hated for. She knows that she couldn’t have possibly known, but it still hurts. It probably always will.

She kills Isabella the next day, which feels _incredible._ She channels all her anger of the past months, all the rage and sorrow and fear, into the killing blow, sending Isabella to where she belongs.

It feels great, but it doesn’t heal her, because it doesn’t bring back Dale.

But it’s fine. The next ten days pass in a blur as they get ever closer to beating Moses, and she barely has time to think about the fact that her husband is dead. She breaks off from her family for good, she gets coffee with Esther and Em, and she pretends like things are normal, because that’s all she can do to curb the crushing loneliness in her heart.

That loneliness hits its peak on New Years’ Eve, sitting atop the Empire State Building with nothing but the wind whistling around her. “Dale, why the fuck did you send me up here,” she mumbles under her breath, and she can almost hear him in her mind, _I didn’t; you did this all on your own._

_Who’s here on top of the Empire State building?_

“Motherfuckin’ _I’m_ here,” Sofia says, and the wind crescendos around her, all consuming. The frustration that was building in her fizzles out, morphing into something entirely else. “Okay,” she says, a reassurance to herself. “So, I guess I choose myself to be the chosen one.”

Thunder crackles around her, her body filling with a power she hadn’t known she’d been missing. Her skin tingles with it, and she can’t help the smile overtake her face. She did it. She’s the motherfucking chosen one.

When she closes her eyes, she can almost picture the pride on Dale’s face.

\--

And then, she keeps losing him, over and over, each time he comes to visit her, Questing Blade in hand, and it doesn’t stop hurting.

She can will herself not to think about it when he’s down with her, mostly. She can get wrapped up in the feeling of his arms around her, something she never thought she’d have again. She can get lost in his touch, the taste of his lips on hers, different than when he was alive but still so distinctly _Dale._

It’s not until after that the ache of losing him hits. In those first few months, she chases it away with a drink, not so different from the first time she lost him all those months ago. As she starts to get sober, she replaces drinking with work, spending more and more time at the Monastery, because if she’s working, she can’t be thinking, and if she’s not thinking, she can’t be sad. It’s a fool-proof plan, until it isn’t.

Until Dale visits for what Sofia knows, even if neither of them acknowledge it, is the last time. Until he meets her at the graveyard and gives her the Questing Blade, the weight of never seeing him again heavier than any blade could ever be. Until she finds out she’s pregnant.

Like every other time he leaves, Sofia tries not to dwell on it. If she is a little more quick to tears than usual, no one mentions it. But when she sees the positive pregnancy test, it gets much, _much_ harder to ignore. Suddenly, it’s not just about her anymore, and she doesn’t know how to handle that.

The only thing she can think is, _I need to find a way to get him back._

Sofia spends all her time researching, trying to find anything that can raise the dead. She knows it’s a fool’s errand, that it’s messing with the natural laws of the universe, but she doesn’t care. If magic is real, she should be able to bring her husband back.

(She has the thought, once, that maybe trying to figure out a way to bring him back is just another on the long list of ways to avoid her grief. She promptly does not think about it again)

In between researching spells and trying to take down Gladiator, she does everything a pregnant person does: goes to an unfathomable amount of appointments and classes, reads an even more obscene number of parenting books, and babyproofs her apartment as much as possible.

She’s not alone, and she knows that. Pete goes to her doctor’s appointments with her, Esther and Ricky to her classes. Iga passes down some of her kids’ stuff that she’d kept, Kingston helps her paint the nursery, and Cody - well, Cody mainly stays out of her way which, really, is the greatest gift he could give her.

So it’s not bad. Hell, her pregnancy goes pretty fuckin’ great. But when she’s alone at night, the baby kicking inside of her, she can’t help but ache for Dale to excitedly press his hands to her stomach like she knows he would.

\--

Sofia gives birth a week late, a fact that everyone who is around her in that time knows well. When she finally goes into labor, it’s almost a relief; sure, it hurts like hell, but she’s just ready for her kid to be _out._

She calls Lugash, who says he’ll be at her apartment as fast as possible. They’d discussed going to one of Staten Island’s hospitals, but Sofia has grown quite attached to Lugash as her doctor, so they’d opted for a home birth.

She calls Pete next, breathing through her contractions while she waits for him to pick up. She tells him that she’s in labor, and he says that he’ll call everyone else, just like they’d planned a month ago.

Lugash is the first to get there, and he sets up as quickly as he can in the guest room that Sofia’s giving birth in. (“I am _not_ giving birth in the bed I sleep in,” she had told Lugash when they decided to do it at her apartment, and Lugash had just nodded sagely in response.)

People trickle in slowly, wishing her good luck and congratulations as they do, and Sofia smiles at them each time, though she suspects it looks more like a wince.

There’s a part of her that can’t bear the knowledge that Dale isn’t going to be here to watch the birth of his kid, that he won’t be able to watch them grow up. Eyes stinging, she blinks rapidly and, if anyone asks, she’ll say it’s the pain. “Where’s Kingston?” she asks abruptly to distract herself, as he’s the only one who hasn’t popped in to say something to her.

It’s only Pete and Lugash in the room with her, so Pete responds, “Oh, yeah, he told me that he was stuck in some big appointment or something, and that he couldn’t make it yet. He wishes you luck, though.” She nods, and that’s when Lugash tells her to push, and the rest passes in a blur.

She collapses back onto the bed when she finishes, and almost misses when Lugash says, “It’s a boy.” She smiles as she rests her head back against the pillow; she never cared what the baby’s sex was, but she hopes that he looks like Dale.

Lugash brings the baby - her _son_ \- up to her, and she cradles him tight against her chest. She’s so filled with maternal love it’s overwhelming. Sofia’s never felt happier in her life.

There’s a knock at the door a few moments later. “It’s Kingston.” Pete stands to open the door once Sofia gives him the a-okay, and Kingston’s face immediately brightens at the sight of Sofia and the baby.

“Congratulations, Sofie,” he says, voice soft and face bright. Sofia can’t help but beam up at him. “I brought you a little gift,” he says, and the smile on his face widens as Dale steps into the doorway behind him.

Sofia’s face drops into an expression of shock as she looks to Kingston for an explanation, not quite believing her eyes. “Kingston, what-”

“I’ve been working with the rest of the gang for the past few months on a True Restoration. I was trying to get it perfected before you gave birth, but-”

“Kingston, oh my God,” she says, voice shaking as tears spring to her eyes. “Thank you, thank you.” She turns her attention to Dale, and it’s like staring into the sun. Her heart is beating so hard she’s sure everyone in the room can hear it, but she doesn’t care. Her husband is _here._ “Dale, get over here. Come see your son.”

“My son,” he echoes, voice filled with awe. Kingston, Pete, and Lugash leave as Dale moves closer to Sofia, but Sofia pays them no attention. Dale sits in the chair formerly occupied by Pete, resting one hand on Sofia’s and lifts a finger on the other up to the baby’s tiny palm. He immediately wraps his fingers around Dale’s, and the simple gesture is enough to wrench a sob out of Sofia.

Dale immediately looks over to her, concern etched on his face. “Is this too much? I told Kingston we should wait-”

“No,” Sofia cuts him off, “This is perfect. I’m glad you didn’t wait.” She smiles a wobbly smile up at him. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he replies easily, and Sofia thinks that it’s the truest thing either of them have ever said.

**Author's Note:**

> (listen i know that it’s unreasonable that kingston would have a true restoration by this point let me have this)
> 
> follow me on tumblr @ sasharchivists


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